Affiliate Marketing And Adventure Tours — Here’s How The Two Work Together

 

Affiliate marketing is great for outdoor adventure guides looking to increase their website traffic, boost brand awareness, and expand their reach. You’ve probably seen affiliate marketing at work. Namely through blogs or social media posts. If you clicked on their link and bought the product or service, then that affiliate marketer was paid a commission based on your purchase.

From finding an affiliate network to deciding on how much you’ll pay for a booking, there is a lot to consider when starting an affiliate program. Keep reading to see how affiliate marketing and adventure tour providers work together.

Table Of Contents

Affiliate Marketing — What Is It?

Affiliate Marketing — How Does It Work?

Is Affiliate Marketing Right For Your Business?

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Networks

Affiliate Marketing — What Is It?

Essentially, affiliate marketing is a partnership between an affiliate, or, marketer, and a company (you). The affiliate posts a unique URL on their website or social media platform. Then, the company pays the marketer when the customers they refer to the company buys that service.

It’s also called “performance-based marketing” because affiliates only get paid when there’s a sale for the company. In other words, they’re kind of like salespeople for a company.

You may have seen affiliate marketing at work on TripAdvisor or Kayak when they review destinations. They’ll write a review on the destination, promote it through their website, social media platforms, and email newsletters, and include a link to whatever brand they’re promoting. If you click on that link and pay for the service, TripAdvisor/Kayak earns a commission from that.

Some companies pay per lead and others will only pay when a customer buys their service. By only paying commissions when a customer buys something from you, you get new customers at a guaranteed rate.

There are four key players in an affiliate program:

1. Affiliate/Marketer: This is the brand or person selling your service.
2. The Company (you): The brand or company paying affiliates commissions.
3. The Affiliate Network: The software tracking website traffic and sales.
4. The Consumer: The person visiting the affiliate’s website, clicks the link, and buys the service from the Company.

Affiliate Marketing — How Does It Work?

Some people wonder, “does affiliate marketing still work?” and the answer is yes. 81% of brands have affiliate programs. According to Truelist, “More than 40% of marketers in the country say affiliate programs are their top customer acquisition channel.” With the rise of influencers on social media, this number will continue to grow.

The simple and most effective way is to get on an affiliate network. There are countless options so research will be key. Brands and companies create a profile, list their services or products, and determine the commission rate.

The Gist Of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliates, or marketers, apply or sign up to advertise your service. They’re assigned a specific URL with tracking parameters that communicate with your website. When their audience clicks their unique URL and visits your website, you pay them the set commission when that consumer books a reservation with you.

If you don’t have a competitive commission rate, you’ll get very few affiliates marketing your outdoor adventure tour. It’s imperative that you offer something valuable to make their time worth sending you traffic.

Is Affiliate Marketing Right For Your Business?

While businesses big and small utilize affiliate marketing, it can work particularly well for small businesses. It’s like hiring a salesperson and only paying them when they’ve generated an outdoor adventure booking for you. Plus, affiliates are treated like contractors so you don’t have to pay them health insurance or provide benefits.

Benefits

Hand Pick Your Affiliates

Being able to pick who you want representing your brand gives you a bit more control over the marketing process. You can review the affiliate’s social media platforms and website to determine if their audience is also interested in the outdoor adventure tours you provide. You can decide whether or not they’ll represent your brand well.

Targeted Traffic

With an affiliate marketer, they already have an engaged audience (or at least they should). Plus, it’s an audience that trusts them and their recommendations. With that, you get to target your audience through them without having to hope that one of your display ads within another blog will work or not.

Pay For Performance And Sales

Another great benefit of affiliate marketing is only paying for bookings. Unlike PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns where you pay for every click (whether that leads to a sale or not), you only pay for a sale. This helps small tour operators that don’t have a marketing budget.

Low Risk

You’re not just throwing money at Google and telling it to show your ad between such-and-such time and hope for a qualified lead. With affiliate marketing, your leads are more likely to be qualified and if not, you only pay for the sales. If a marketer sends a ton of traffic your way, you still only have to pay for what’s booked.

Semi-Autopilot

There is an initial investment of time at the beginning when setting up your affiliate program, but if you use an experienced platform, it can nearly run itself. Depending on the platform, you can be as involved as you want every day or you can simply review reports. It bears mentioning that the more involved you are, the better results you’ll see.

Disadvantages

There are a few disadvantages to affiliate marketing, which we’ll briefly mention.

You Don’t Control The Messaging

If you take a hands-off approach to choosing your affiliates, you don’t get to control how they represent your guiding business. Affiliates are looking to make money and sometimes, they don’t do it the most honest way.

Lead Quality Might Not Be As Good

Yes, we just said that you have a targeted audience through affiliate marketing, but depending on how the marketer writes about your brand, this could lead to poor quality leads. If you continue to receive poor leads, this could negatively impact your brand as well.

Hard To Recruit Affiliates

The affiliate marketing industry is competitive, like most things. It can be difficult to recruit your own affiliates. If that’s the case, then signing up on a platform will be helpful for you.